Appetite
by venus42a6
Summary: S asks Pearl out on their first date. Unfortunately, it's a breakfast date, and Pearl isn't used to eating.


_Gonna be in Beach City in an hour. Wanna take me up on that breakfast deal? ;)_

It took Pearl nearly five minutes just to open the message. Human communications technology just wasn't intuitive the way Homeworld screens were, and Pearl's fingers kept slipping on the phone Garnet had presented to her as soon as she'd returned from the concert… that night…

Her fingers slid even more uncontrollably as she recalled running that red light, riding on the back of S's motorcycle, the kiss.

How had Garnet's future vision foreseen her need of a phone and not the way she'd stumble trying to use it?

It took another five minutes to tap out her response, but only a fraction of a second to decide what to say:

 _I would very much enjoy accompanying you as you dine._

S's reply zipped back to her so quickly that Pearl didn't even have time to put her phone away:

 _Great, see you at the BD at 9!_

9.

"Well, won't that be lovely," Pearl said aloud to herself as she eyed the clock.

8:15.

Not enough time to go on a mission, or organize her swords properly, but she could fold Steven's laundry while she waited. She warped to the palm of the temple's hand, where the dryer had surely by now finished the load of identical T-shirts she had placed there earlier.

She brought the clothes back to the house and got to work. Such a simple pattern, the same motion over and over again. A predictable, relaxing chore to calm her nerves. Just so long as she didn't get carried away…

8:20.

Fold, stack, fold, stack… these were her favorite loads, when Steven didn't have the odd sweater or tank top throwing off the rhythm. Most caretakers of human children, or any wearers of human clothing, it occurred to her, were not so lucky. The sheer variation in their clothes made this soothing pattern impossible.

How much variation in her wardrobe did S have? Would she be dressed the same as she had been at the concert? Did she change clothes as frequently as Steven?

When she wasn't around other humans, did she wear clothes at all?

Pearl shook herself. Where had such a peculiar thought as that come from?

8:25.

Her face was still bright blue when Steven and Amethyst barged in.

"Yo, P, so there's this new game at the arcade at Funland—"

"And it's like this pilot thing, and if you win you get lots of tickets, and you'd be great at it!"

"That sounds lovely," Pearl told them without much conviction, recalling the last time Steven had dragged the gems into Funland, "but I have an appointment to keep in… half an hour."

"Aw man, is that like a court thing? I thought Greg said he didn't get any calls about the Dondai!" Amethyst sprawled out in the middle of the floor, forcing Pearl to reach over her to grab the next shirt.

"Is Pearl gonna go to jail?" Steven looked nervously between his caretakers.

"No worries, Ste-man, we'd bust her out in no time!" Amethyst offered him a reassuring smile. "But you're not… right?"

"My little, er… run-in with the law... has so far held no repercussions. By now I think it's safe to say we're in the clear."

"So where are you going?"

"I'm meeting S."

Steven and Amethyst looked at each other, then at Pearl, incredulously.

Steven raised a fist in the air victoriously. "She's back in town! Pearl, you've got a date! We'll have to get you all dressed up, and do something with that hair, and ooh, I think I left a box of chocolates in Lion's mane—"

"That really won't be necessary, Steven. It's just breakfast at the Big Donut." With all her uncertainty regarding human customs, Pearl was still pretty sure the Big Donut did not require formal attire.

Confusion clouded Amethyst's face. "Wait wait wait… you're eating breakfast?"

It was Pearl's turn to be confused. "What? No, I meant it's her breakfast time, and she invited me to join her." Pearl had spent many a morning watching Steven eat; it wasn't unpleasant so long as she didn't think about her own stomach (or lack thereof) for too long.

"Right… to eat with her!"

"She didn't specify that!"

"But that's what she meant," Steven explained. "A first date is usually something light and simple, like a meal together."

"But I don't eat!"

"S doesn't know that!"

Pearl felt her hands grow clammy. What had she gotten herself into? She was excited to see S, but the idea of a donut mushing up… inside her form… while she was still trying to concentrate on everything else? And what if it finished digesting right when… no, the thought was too horrible to think of, she couldn't possibly…

"Here, we'll help you practice!" Steven suggested.

"In the next… twenty minutes?" Pearl inquired skeptically.

"Sure, just watch! It's not so bad once you get used to it!"

Immediately, Amethyst pulled a can of green beans out of the pantry and tossed it in her mouth. She swallowed. "It's that easy!"

"Amethyst, humans don't eat the metal part. Or the label. Here, try it like this." He picked up a banana and peeled it daintily, taking small bites at a time. "Now you try."

Pearl reached into the fruit bowl and picked up an orange. Steven had peeled his first; should she do the same? Was that how it worked with most human food and she just never noticed? Would she have to peel a donut? How would she even do that?

No, it wasn't the time to worry about such things. She had to learn to eat. But taking off the peel might make for less mush inside…

"Here, I'll get that for you." Steven pulled a tool out of the drawer and used it to pry off the orange's skin. "Oranges are harder to peel than bananas." He gave it back.

"Oh… right." Now all she had to do was shapeshift.

Shapeshift.

That had never been especially easy for Pearl to do. Amethyst, Garnet, and even Steven had it down perfectly. But the moment Pearl became distracted from the form she meant to mimic, she would snap back to her regular self at once.

One thing at a time.

The human digestive tract. She shivered with revulsion.

First an esophagus.

Then a stomach.

She could worry about the rest later. This was all she needed for now.

And there was the orange; Steven had divided it into slices, so she would only have to eat one wedge at a time. Surely that was doable.

She put the fruit to her lips, chewed, chewed some more, all right, here was where a human would swallow…

Swallow.

And then…

Masticated orange flew all over the kitchen as Pearl gagged, her esophagus and stomach gone, reabsorbed into her usual form.

"It's no use!" Pearl cried as she wiped her mouth. "I can't do it. I… I can't do this with S. I can't even do this here with you!"

"Hey, don't worry about it. Just tell her you ate already, or that you don't feel well," Amethyst offered.

Steven shook his head. "No. There's no need to lie. Pearl, you'll just have to tell her why you can't. I'm sure she'll understand if you just tell her the truth."

The truth. Would S react well to that? Lots of people didn't, hence Pearl's lack of a driver's license or steady employment. The people at the DMV had demanded a birth certificate before ultimately throwing her out, and the couple jobs she had taken to help make ends meet after Steven was born had both ended with a freaked-out manager running away. Pearl recalled how the pink-haired woman had walked away the first time Pearl so much as hinted she was of a different species.

But then again, S had done one thing the DMV agents and store managers hadn't.

She had come back.

To be fair, Pearl hadn't exactly mentioned much more about being an alien after S had picked her up for a gas refill that night. Maybe silence was golden. Humans usually avoided things that were outside of their comfort zone, after all.

Then again… not all humans.

"Connie was okay with it when she saw my powers," Steven told Pearl, as though reading her mind. "It never kept her away."

"Yeah, and Vidalia was never grossed out by me!" Amethyst plucked some orange pulp out of her hair and licked it off her fingers.

"That's saying something," Steven added good-naturedly. "And then there's my dad!"

Greg.

And… Rose.

Greg had taken everything about Rose in stride—her strength, her beauty, her size, her shield, her healing tears, her ability to float. Rose had confided in him about the war—Pearl was never sure how much, exactly, because at the time she had wanted to think as little as possible about anything having to do with Greg and Rose's relationship. She knew Rose had told Greg things she'd never mentioned to any of her other suitors over the millennia, because Greg wasn't like the other men. Greg could be trusted, and Greg loved Rose.

For the very first time ever, Pearl was grateful for that fact. It meant there was hope for other humans, that just maybe S would also be able to handle dating a gem.

Dating. Pearl and S, dating.

What would Rose say if she knew?

"Pearl? Are you crying?"

Pearl wiped her eyes. "Apparently, yes." She stood up. "But I'll be all right. Really. Now if you'll excuse me…"

For after all, the clock read 8:55, and Pearl did not want to be late.

She reached the donut shop and stopped just shy of the door.

A motorcycle pulled into a parking space around the side.

S pulled off her helmet.

She was, in fact, dressed differently. Cutoff shorts replaced the cargo pants she'd worn last time, and there was no flannel shirt tied around her waist. Her strapless top was red-and-white-striped, and something hung around her neck.

A star.

But the hair was still pink—and now, with the sunlight hitting it, it seemed to shimmer, just a bit.

S had been captivating the night of the concert, but now?

She was beautiful in a way Pearl had never seen in any human, not even in Steven himself.

What was going to happen? Would they kiss? Were they just going to talk? No, human convention dictated that they were going to eat… well, S was going to eat, and Pearl was going to explain… that.

She felt a knot rise in her stomach.

Wait.

Her _stomach_?

But there it was, and Pearl knew it, could feel the void in her form. The second she had seen S, she had, for the first time in her thousands of years of life, shapeshifted involuntarily. Somehow, in the presence of this human, out of all the humans on this planet, Pearl felt herself morphing to become more human-like.

Did this happen to Rose when she was around Greg?

It wasn't just the stomach, either. A wild heartbeat resounded inside of Pearl's chest, faster than the Rubies' spaceship at full speed. Her breath caught in her lungs, real lungs, not the shallow air pouches she used in order to talk. And there was something else, something in the way she was compelled to dash over to S, something in the rush of very un-gemlike rhythms in the veins she didn't formerly have.

She was _hungry_ , in ways more than one.

"Hey, Pearl, hope I didn't keep you waiting!" S threw her arms around Pearl and squeezed tightly, making the hunger in her new veins flow more rapidly and squeezing air out of her new lungs. "Sorry. Just… I've been waiting to see you again, you know?"

"I do know." Pearl smiled as her stomach rumbled. S laughed.

"Now how 'bout I get you that donut?" she asked.

Pearl nodded. The question of whether she could eat her meal had been resolved, for sure, but nevertheless…

"And then we'll talk," she told S, who nodded solemnly. "There are some things about me that might need an explanation."


End file.
